


The First Sentinel: Side Stories

by Spudato



Series: The First Sentinel AU [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout 4
Genre: Non-Binary!Lone Wanderer, Other, Sarah Lives AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24462166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spudato/pseuds/Spudato
Summary: In another world, Sarah Lyons gets to enjoy the peaceful nothingness of quieter days. Nobody's entirely sure what's around the corner or what the next day will bring, but she's learnt to enjoy the here, and the now.Shorter side-stories of The First Sentinel AU, as taken from my Tumblr over at sentinel-lyons. Set in Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and all the spaces between.
Relationships: Lone Wanderer/Sarah Lyons
Series: The First Sentinel AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1766890
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	1. Batter Up

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering whether you've missed some sort of bigger fic to go with this: don't worry, it doesn't actually exist yet. But it will! Soon! For now, though, I've recently made a blog on Tumblr and I've been tossing out some thoughts, and I wanted to collect them on AO3 so they don't get lost to time if Tumblr decides that words are illegal now. So welcome to the side-stories of The First Sentinel AU, an AU in which Sarah survives a Brotherhood coup, and _boy_ if she isn't pissed about it.
> 
> (Sarah in this AU is queer and a ?non-binary? woman [she's figuring it out. or not {she/her}] and the Lone Wanderer [ **{REDACTED}** "Rookie" Reeves] is agender [they/them]. Misgender them and I'll hunt you for sport!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A small note:** when making Rookie in this AU, I was trying to go for a... "canon", I guess, take on the LW? That includes Catherine's "canonical" look if you go out-of-bounds, the good-at-baseball thing -- stuff I wouldn't have played if I was, like, making a character from scratch, but that I'm including given the game's implications on the matter. And then I made them non-binary because it's my story and I get to decide that everyone's trans.
> 
> Most importantly though, they always wear a little red cap. Don't forget that. It's very important.

“You see, I was the best batter in Vault one-oh-one,” Rookie starts flippantly, cockily, and they’re swinging their bat in one hand like a windmill’s blade, around and around and around again. “Pinpoint accuracy. Could hit a ball onto the head of a nail. Used to sound like a gunshot when I was swinging.”

“Uh-huh?” Sarah says, and she’s deeply amused by this display. Rookie’s done a lot of impressive things in their life – survived shit nobody should have ever survived – but their baseball career is a particular point of pride for them. It’s probably because there’s little else in that metal box underground that they really care for. “Sounds exciting.”

Rookie gives her a bland stare, and then they tug their ubiquitous red cap down to just above their eyebrows, the brim shading their face. “The thing is, I may have been the best batter, but _Chip Taylor_ was the best pitcher. He could flick his wrist just like _this–”_ Rookie demonstrates, and Sarah can’t help but think it’d be a lot clearer if they’d actually had a baseball to throw. “–and it’d come at you like a bullet. He could strike out anyone. It was _nuts.”_

“So, what’d you do?” Sarah asks as she stretches out across the bed, the picture of leisure. She’s not really allowed to do much else, really, as prescribed by Doc Church, who saw her wealth of injuries after… well, after _everything,_ and promptly told her that if he caught her being generally vertical in his vicinity, he was gonna put the last nail in her coffin himself. Which is fair. Sarah’s trying to be a good patient about it all. “Hang up your hat?”

Rookie snorts, and they take their bat in both hands again, knees dropping before they swing out at nothing in particular, and the motion is so precise and practised that it’s like a whip, cutting right through the stagnant air like a knife. “Hell no. I found an old pitching machine that nobody had used for the better part of a hundred years, and I patched it up. Gave it a top pitching speed of _fuck off_ and set it up in my old firing range. That thing spat balls so fast it could crack a rib.”

The way they say it tells Sarah that that’s been learnt from first hand experience, but their eyes glimmer, dark, thrilled to have an audience. “So I’d spend my time down there learning how to hit back. Christ, used to make my arms ache something chronic every time I hit ‘em wrong. But I got it. Hit one, then two. Then three and four and on and on and on. Got to a point I was tryna rig it up to go faster because I had the timing down like a machine.”

They pause for a moment, reset themself, and their gaze isn’t quite here, in Megaton, in the confines of their little ramshackle house. No, it’s somewhere a few miles north-west of here, underground, in a dark and dingy Vault, remembering something from a lifetime ago.

“We had our game,” they continue, voice low. “Chip was pitching, was striking people out like clockwork. I stepped up to the plate, eyed the ball. I missed the first. Missed the second by a hair. And then– _whap!”_

The bat swings again, fast enough that Sarah can’t even track the motion, and Rookie’s eyes follow a ball that doesn’t exist as it sails upwards. “Straight into the corner of the atrium! Everyone’s scrambling, tryna find it, whilst I meander over every base in Vault 101′s most _legendary_ homerun of all time! Eat my _shit!”_

“Woah,” Sarah says, and she doesn’t doubt it’s true – she’s seen Rookie use their bat to send grenades back to their owners with hardly a flinch. “What’d he say? Chip?”

Rookie’s face sort of sets, her voice bringing them back into reality, and they shrug, letting the bat fall back to their side. “He was pretty impressed after the fact. I mean, at the time it was a huge upset and he was kinda pissed I’d shat on his record, but he’s dead now, so.” They shrug again, easily. Glance away.

“Oh,” Sarah says, and she thinks back to when Rookie had gotten that SOS on their Pip-Boy _(I have to go I’m sorry I’ll be back soon something uh someone needs me and it’s urgent I’m sorry I’m sorry back soon),_ remembers their return with their face crumpled and frustration sticking to their body like smears of soot. “Sucks.”

Rookie hums, and then they lift up their bat for an inspection. It’s not the same bat they’d come out of the Vault with – that one was long shattered into splinters, a lifetime of batting meaning a well-aimed swing had snapped it in twain – and instead it’s aluminium and dented all over, a thick and rusted chain wrapped around the top promising to smash skulls into a bloody, pulpy mess. 

“Yeah, well.” They make a face at a bit of old gore that’s still marring the surface, sticking to the grooves of brushed metal. “I was mostly telling you all that ‘cause it’s why I’m so good at getting people in the face. Just gotta think of ‘em like Chip’s baseball pitches. Send ‘em into the back corner of the atrium.”

They laugh, and then Rookie looks up towards the ceiling, their smile fixed and fake as they step back into memory again, looking towards something else entirely. Something Sarah’s never seen before, in a place she’s never been. “Or, y’know. At the Overseer’s window, if I really want them dead.”


	2. Proved You Right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A small note:** Home Plate doesn't canonically have a basement, but because I'm actually doing a Sarah Lyons playthrough in Fallout 4 as I'm writing the main fic, I have a mod that lets me stick down basements for a little more breathing room. It kinda became a Thing in my game, though, so we're all going to close our eyes and imagine it's canon together. Alright. Do we envision it? Cool.

“This probably comes as, like, no surprise, but man… I love this city.”

Finding out there was a balcony, of sorts, on the roof of Sarah’s home in Diamond City — _home plate,_ as they call it, which was a name that’d flown right over Sarah’s head until Rookie had gleefully explained the term — had been a pleasant surprise when Sarah had thrown down the two-thousand or so caps to buy the place, clambering up the rickety old ladder to the roof on her first inspection of the house only to find herself in a little sitting area that overlooked the market. She hadn’t made great use of it right away, more interested in the basement underneath that would later become her new base(ment) of operations in the Commonwealth, but then Rookie had shown up to Diamond City on the coattails of a local merchant, and now they spend near every evening sitting in the shell of an old caravan that’s been welded down to the corrugated sheets of the roof, drinking lukewarm beer as they listen to Myrna holler anti-synth slogans, or quietly singing along to songs on the radio until exhaustion makes all the words collapse into mumbles.

It’s a moment of peace, of relaxation, in a time increasingly fraught with battles and tension, and Sarah actually looks forward to tinkering with weapons or armour on her lap at the end of the day, Rookie beside her and resting on an old sunlounger as they hum along to the radio. It helps to put things into perspective, rather than grinding herself down to a sliver as — many years ago — she would have always done.

“I mean, I don’t like the mayor, or his whole ‘no-ghouls’ bullshit or anything,” they quickly add when Sarah glances up from under her eyelashes, head bowed as she turns the extended magazine of a 10-mil pistol about in her hand. Back in the Citadel, over a decade ago, weapon modding was never really a thing Sarah had needed to do, but it turns out that after years of maintaining Power Armor she has quite the knack for it. It’s just a bit more fiddly than she’s used to, is all. “But I really like everything else. The people, mostly. The market. The stands. All that stuff.”

Sarah snorts under her breath, squinting back down as the sunlight slowly dims on the horizon, a cool evening ushering in a breeze and making the hairs on her arms prickle. Spring is approaching the Commonwealth, the months quick to pass, and soon the most hardy of trees will be flush with life again, Ragstag fawns wobbling on unsteady legs, Yao Guai slowly waking from hibernation. It’s a new year, and 2288 is already shaping up to be an exciting one. “You sure that’s not just ‘cause we’re on a baseball field? Pitch?” Sarah screws up her nose. “Stadium?”

“Baseball park?” Rookie offers, though there’s no surety in their voice. “We called it the _baseball diamond_ back in the Vault, since that was pretty much all we had space for.”

“Baseball diamond, then. You sure it’s not ‘cause of that? Isn’t this, like, your wildest dream, or whatever?”

Rookie kicks one leg out at Sarah, too far away for their foot to even hope of landing anywhere near her, but she jerks backwards to dodge it anyway, laughing at their grimace as they retract their foot. “Oh, _please!_ I have bigger dreams than arguing with _Moe_ fuckin’ _Cronin_ about how ass-backwards he got his baseball rules!”

That first argument with Moe had been quite the spectacle, and one Sarah knows Diamond City won’t forget any time soon; Rookie had been checking out his stock with wide eyes, giving each bat a practice swing to feel the weight and heft as it arced around, and when he’d leant down to tell them how crazy Pre-War baseball had been — _one team would beat the other team to death with things called Baseball Bats, and the best bats were called Swatters_ — Rookie had given him a public dressing-down that even Sarah had sidled away from, lest Rookie’s faithful bat, grasped in increasingly irate hands, accidentally found an arc directly into her skull by mistake. It had ended most excitingly with a lot of swears, intervention from the guards, and Rookie’s solemn declaration that they were never gonna buy bats from _‘such a dipshit’,_ and even now they and Moe glare daggers at each other from across the market, much to Sarah’s ongoing amusement with the whole thing.

As if remembering the same incident, Rookie takes a swig of beer, glowering off at the floodlights that shine down onto the city. “At least Alex agrees with me about him. This shit’s a dying art, apparently.”

Sarah pauses for a moment, and she can’t help the way her gaze tracks towards the far stands, glancing through one of the glassless windows to where ramshackle abodes sit, suspended, above the common rabble. Alex — or the Sole Survivor as some call her now, after her story about the Vault got published for hundreds of eyes to see, and for many more mouths to gossip about — had been granted a house in the upper stands by Mayor McDonough out of the kindness (or manipulation) of his heart, offering her a safe place to adapt to the new and unforgiving world she’d found herself in. Since they’d met, Sarah had struggled to get much more out of her than single-syllable words and pleas for her to find her son, but it was only when Rookie had shown up that her sturdy, Pre-War walls had finally begun to crumble, just a little.

Really, it’s because they’re a Vaultie, too — different experiments be damned — and it helps that they’re someone who was also thrown into the topsy-turvy world of the wastes with nary an idea for the horrors within. They might not quite be out of time, but they do understand being out of _place,_ and when it turned out that Alex is (or, perhaps _was)_ quite the baseball buff herself, they’d forged a connection that made her, initially, a little warmer. Nowadays, Alex is very nearly _sociable._

But she still very much keeps to herself, and it’s enough to have Sarah worry. She sees a lot, maybe too _much,_ of Rookie in her — back when they met in Chevy Chase, still new to this world — to be strictly comfortable leaving her to her own devices, but there’s not much else to be done. It’ll take years before she’ll ever really adapt, Rookie had said, years until she can really grapple with the world she doesn’t know. It’s just tough shit.

“Yeah,” Sarah murmurs absently, drawing herself from her rabbithole of thoughts, and Rookie follows her eyeline carefully, knowing exactly where she’s looking. “Well, hey. I guess you have to think of it this way; you and Alex make up two people who know how to play baseball, right? How many more do you need for a full team?”

Rookie laughs at that, sombre face breaking out into a toothy grin, and they slide even further down the lounger as their hat slips over their eyebrows. “Hah! Find me six more Vaulties, and then we’ll _really_ be talking. I’ll be able to hit the first homerun in two-hundred fuckin’ _years.”_

“Wait,” Sarah says with a frown, doing the maths. Even to her ears, it doesn’t seem to add up right. “Only eight people? You sure?”

Rookie snorts, and then they reach up to take their hat off with a lazy pluck, eyeing Sarah up seconds before her vision goes dark as it’s tossed, haphazardly, onto her head and over her eyes.

“Baby,” Rookie coos fondly as she splutters, nearly dropping the magazine to the ground whilst she scrambles to whip it off her head. “Bold of you to think you can worm your way out of being our pitcher.”

The hat gets launched back at Rookie’s face, the brim making a dull impact on the bridge of their nose, and their shout of pain and laughter echoes right across the city.


	3. California Dreamin'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A small note:** I'm still not over Sarah canonically being born in Lost Hills back in California. Wild. What a time to be alive.

“Do you remember much about California, or were you too young to remember it?”

Rookie has a weird obsession about Sarah’s being from California, sort of. Maybe that’s a little harsh, actually, but Sarah didn’t think they’d be so fascinated by it when she’d mentioned it in passing once. To her, it’s more of just a fun fact rather than something of weight, of  _ importance; _ more party trick than anything of real substance. But Rookie had just stared up at her with their big brown eyes when she’d mentioned the merchant she’d travelled to Boston with had guessed it in one (Erin, her name had been, smiling widely as she’d made the leap of logic that nobody born and bred in DC could pick up a tan as well as Sarah can), before bombarding her with questions she couldn’t answer.

So, Sarah pauses from where she’s painstakingly stitching ballistic weave into her Minutemen longcoat, bulletproofing it to high heaven and then some, and she bites her lip as she looks at her wonky stitching. She’s never had a skill with this sort of stuff, not like Rookie does, but this feels like it should be a personal undertaking… even if Rookie’ll probably redo it all in the dead of night anyway. “Too young, yeah,” she admits after a long moment. “I was only… three, maybe four, when we left Lost Hills.”

What few memories she has of the time before DC are very... split, she would say, all strongly divided into light and dark; of menacingly long hallways and a spread of open desert. None of them are of specific people or times, but that’s just fine. She’d never planned to actually return there again anyway.

Rookie hums, a low note in their throat signalling an undertone of disappointment, the sound muted from where they’re sat at the dining table across from Sarah’s armour workbench. Sarah’s not sure if it’s directed at her own poor memory or at her terrible handiwork on her coat, but neither of them feel like good options.

“That’s a shame,” they murmur after another second, drumming their fingers across the table’s mottled surface. “Did your dad ever tell you anything about it?”

“Bits and pieces, here and there.” Sarah scowls down at her needle, willing for it to stitch itself together. “Mostly on the politics, I’ll be honest, both in and outside the Brotherhood.”

“Like?”

It actually takes Sarah a few seconds to wrack her brain for answers to that; lately, she’d found she’s been discarding a lot of information that has little to do with surviving Boston’s many enemies, and given how many foes are scattered between the ruined skyscrapers and down in the boggy swamps, that’s a lot of information to forget. “Like, the, uh… the NCR, and the other local factions. The hierarchy within the Brotherhood, talking about all the other divisions, the Elders, the… boring shit, you know.”

Rookie, tragically, doesn’t look bored; rather, they seem more fascinated than ever. “What’s the NCR?”

Sarah squints down at her own hands, and then looks to Rookie with wide eyes like she’s just realised something fantastical. “Honestly? I do not even vaguely fucking remember. They’re, like… a republic? Got a president and stuff, lots of bureaucracy. I think they use paper money, too? I dunno why I remember that.”

Now it’s Rookie’s turn to pull a face. “Ew, paper money?  _ That’s _ what they prioritised?”

Sarah shrugs, and then hisses when she jabs the needle into her pad of her own thumb by accident. It wells up like a blot of red ink, sinking into the whorls and twists of her thumbprint, and it glints in the light of the low-hanging bulbs. “California is  _ weird  _ like that. Sure am glad I’m over here, actually.”

Rookie looks contemplative for a moment. “I dunno,” they start, speaking slowly as if they need to sound out every syllable. “I think it’d be nice to see the sun more than twice a year.”

“Uh-huh,” Sarah says before she presses her thumb to her mouth, and she grimaces at the iron tang. “Well, you just tell me when you wanna die of heatstroke, and I’ll make the arrangements for us to move right away.”


	4. Double Triple Bossy Duluxe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A small note:** the GOAT deciding that Melee Weapons skill is tied to being a fry cook and NOT the Little League coach career (which is tied to... Unarmed skill???) is a BEWILDERING choice on many levels. I accept it as canon, but you'll be seeing me in court,

“Wait. Wait, wait… the fry cook thing _isn’t_ a joke?!”

About a month (and a bit) after Sarah’s moved into Rookie’s house and home in Megaton, her arrival marked by her just about dragging her own body through the gates to throw herself at their doorstep, Rookie’s pleased to be able to say that it’s been working out pretty well! Or, at least, as well as could be expected when none of this was planned in advance. Sarah’s still struggling to adapt to the otherwise mundane, small-town life that’s been summarily thrust upon her after… well, after the whole _nearly died like seven times_ thing that Rookie doesn’t like to think about, and she’s not used to living in such a small space. Seriously, she nearly knocks herself blind every time she forgets she has to duck her head as she goes down the staircase. Still, they’re making do, figuring it out together… and since they’re, like, _dating_ now, or whatever, Rookie’s happy that it’s all falling into place, even if it’s a little on the haphazard side.

But there’s still surprises to be had, and when Rookie manages to trade for some fresh meat and announces they’re gonna make Sarah one of their famous Vault burgers, she laughs right up until Rookie reveals they were a fry cook. No, for _real._

“Yeah?” Rookie answers, bemused, as Sarah squints over to them like she’s suddenly turned very shortsighted. “I told you! That's what I did!”

Sarah’s nose scrunches up, all the scars on her face pulling taut. “Yeah, but… I thought it was just a really long-winded joke. Like, making up a dumb fact about yourself because we _surface-dwellers_ don’t know any better, y’know?”

Rookie’s not sure how it ever seemed that way, but they did (and do) say a _lot_ of stupid shit when they thought they could get away with it — like saying that they got meat in the Vault by grinding up an unwilling sacrifice every week, or that drinking one’s own piss was a _delicacy,_ or that some Vaulties were so obsessed with the artificial lights that they became like moth people, lured in the direction of a bright torch or flash of a gun’s muzzle. It was fun to make a spectacle of it, if only because the truth was so much more _boring,_ only ever turning interesting to talk about when Rookie’s own life was on the line.

And the fact their GOAT-mandated job was as a fry cook in an old diner nobody ever used any more? Well, that was something that landed right in the _boring_ category, so Rookie had never joked about it... but clearly it’s just about as believable as the _rest_ of the stories.

“Well, bad news; it’s very real,” Rookie replies with a shrug, standing over the shabby kitchen counter shunted in one corner as they shape a series of patties. They don’t need as many as they’re making between them, but that’s ‘cause everything extra is going to get sold to The Brass Lantern, since Jenny’s always asking for them to spice up the menu somehow. She’d believed Rookie was a fry cook from the moment they’d told her, if only because Rookie had gone around to help fix their fryers one time and showed an absolutely stoic response to scalding-hot splatters of oil. “And even though the Overseer was a prick about hating me, everyone liked my burgers, so everyone liked _me.”_

Rookie pauses for a moment, hands slowing as they roll out a ball of minced meat. “Or, maybe they liked that I remembered all their orders by heart. Even Mr. Brotch— uh, my teacher in the Vault, he made a joke about remembering his order when I got my results. Hold the mustard, extra pickles.”

Sarah’s got an expression on her face that says she doesn’t believe any of this, which Rookie supposes makes sense when you consider the sort of life she’d had — a career soldier in the rough-and-tumble wasteland, coming to age with laser fire over her head and earning battle scars. She wasn’t taking weird tests in the safety of a hole in the ground, or complaining when she had to wake up early for an apprenticeship to her new career that she’d be the sole caretaker of at the age of eighteen; Sarah had been clambering up the precarious Brotherhood ranks, fighting off an unholy amount of enemies whilst learning how to command her own squad and accidentally get a Med-X addiction and maintaining suits of Power Armor and laser rifles and— well, Rookie could go on. Sarah’s not anything like them, which is good, because that’s why they _like_ Sarah.

And all the while they’ve been stood there, _thinking,_ Sarah’s gotten up from one of the (several) ratty old sofas that Rookie’s dragged into their house over the months, dusting herself off before stepping up right behind them to loom over their shoulder, looking at their mess of a kitchen counter. God, even when they live together, Rookie somehow manages to forget that Sarah’s built like a shit brickhouse.

“Bizarre,” she finally says, dryly, her smile wry. “And you weren’t coaching the baseball team… how, again?”

Rookie scowls down at that. Truth be told, it was a bit of a sore spot back when sore spots were just emotional and not the sort that left very real scars behind, but honestly? They’re _still_ kinda mad about it! “Apparently, my mediocre throwing arm was very damning. Didn’t matter that I could basically deflect _bullets_ with my bat, noooooo; I needed to _also_ be able to throw a baseball at a one-centimeter-square target across the atrium blindfolded, backwards, and _shitfaced.”_

There’s a brief snort before Sarah dissolves into laughter, rumbling right through the height of her, and the little sting of resentment Rookie still felt — to the Overseer, no doubt, who’d probably pulled strings to make sure Rookie never got to do the thing they were actually _good_ at — melts away in favour of something awed, staring up at how Sarah’s green eyes sparkle. Rookie’s not seen many trees in their life, since DC’s still too much of a bomb-churned wasteland to facilitate many of them, but they like to think they must all look a lot like Sarah’s eyes, shifting between light and dark in the brightness of the sun.

“You—” they start, and then stumble, because their mind really isn’t in the right gear at present. “Can, uh... can we kiss?”

The words fall right out of their mouth before they have the sense to plug the hole, and they blush furiously when they realise that wasn't really the sentence they’d planned to ask. Actually, Rookie’s not sure _what_ they were going to say, because Sarah’s very distracting. All the time.

But Sarah doesn’t even look very surprised — instead, she just smiles a little wider, brows knitting in curiosity. “I mean, you don’t have to ask. You can kiss me whenever.”

“Yeah, but—” Rookie has to stop for a moment, because their gaze is currently darting around wildly, looking at anything that _isn’t_ Sarah’s pretty eyes and her handsome face. “I kinda gotta? Your mouth is, like, miles away from me.”

Sarah huffs out another breath of laughter at that, but Rookie doesn’t even have time to be offended by their own observation before she leans down to press a kiss to their lips, having to stoop under the brim of their cap to reach. It’s never as _electric_ as books and films say it is, but instead it fills Rookie with a tingling sort of warmth that wipes away just about every thought they’ve ever had, and they nearly drop their handful of mince on the floor as Sarah pulls back, looking down at them with a thoughtful look.

“You’re right,” she concludes after a second. “You _are_ miles away. It’s like trying to give a molerat a kiss.”

Rookie just glares as she starts to laugh again, and _boy_ would she be regretting saying that if she wasn’t wearing steel-toed boots around the house! “Oh yeah? Well, trying to kiss you is like tryna kiss a _super mutant._ Maybe even a _behemoth,_ if they had hair.”

At that, Sarah’s eyes go wide, and for the fraction of a second, Rookie actually worries they’ve offended her. Well, that is, until she opens her mouth again. “Wow, you’ve _tried?_ Know thy enemy, I guess.”

Two days later, when Sarah’s complaining about the bruise that’s bloomed across her shin, Rookie doesn’t apologise even once. But that’s okay. It got her closer for kisses for a whole minute, at least.


	5. Dogmeat Me, Dogmeat You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A small note:** I love dogs! I also love I can canonically have it be VERY confusing that there are TWO Dogmeats in this AU. Amazing. Anyway, for reference, Old Dogmeant (Fallout 3) is about 11 years old, and Dogmeat (Fallout 4) is about three years old, or thereabout. Rookie and Sarah dote on them constantly, but Sarah's better about training, as expected. Rookie's just a soft little baby.

It’s as Sarah is staring very intently at an old and well-annotated map of Boston — drawn over countless times by various travellers, circling places of interest and scratching big Xs over pockets of deadly radiation or Radscorpion nests that sit atop neat typeface denoting another of Boston’s many attractions for Pre-War families — that Dogmeat starts hassling her for no good reason, prodding her snout under Sarah’s armpit as her owner leans over her desk in thought. She nudges her away gently, absently, murmuring  _ not now _ as she tries to draw up some strategies for the next battery of missions she’s got planned for the Commonwealth, but Dogmeat’s insistent, snuffling and poking and pushing until Sarah loses her train of thought for the third time, and she finally sighs and stands up, abandoning the idea for now to instead look down into her dog’s big brown eyes.

“You hungry, girl? Is that it?”

Dogmeat wags her tail so hard that her whole body wriggles with the motion, and when she nearly sweeps one of Rookie’s countless collectible bottles of Quantum off the nearest coffee table — waiting to be put into a bulletproof, rocket-proof, explosion-proof and just about  _ nuke-proof _ container — Sarah curses and starts ushering her downstairs. “C’mon, g’won, down you go—”

Truth be told, Home Plate is a little too small for a fully-grown German Shepard, which is only made all the smaller when Sarah makes eye contact with Old Dogmeat lying at the bottom of the stairs, Rookie’s ever-faithful cattledog now greying in the face. He doesn’t quite have the spring in his step that Sarah remembers him having a few years ago, but he’s a stubborn old bastard and Rookie loves him half to death, so Sarah expects him to be hanging around a few more years yet. If she’s being strictly honest, she’d never understood the appeal of having a hound by your side on the battlefield — dogs die so  _ easily, _ and Sarah’s determination to save as many lives as possible is often tested by their presence — but now she’s got a dog of her own, and, well. Rookie’s just a  _ little _ smug about it all.

Still, as soon as Sarah’s foot hits the last step on the stairs, he gets up to give Dogmeat a good sniffling before circling around her legs, and Sarah has a feeling this whole thing is a setup.

“Alright,  _ alright,”  _ she says, stepping gingerly over wayward paws. “You know, you could be annoying someone with a face  _ much _ closer to your level—”

Old Dogmeat makes a gruff sort of  _ woof _ in the back of his throat, and right in that same moment the front door opens, Rookie’s red cap poking through the gap before the rest of them follows, glancing down at both dogs before peering up to Sarah’s unamused face. They take a second of contemplation — backed by the sound of Dogmeat’s tail hitting the side of the door with a  _ whud, whud, whud  _ — before cracking a grin as they put two and two together.

“Oh, man, they turned to you, huh? I told ‘em I was gonna go to Polly’s and pick up some meat, but apparently five minutes is on the long side of time for them.”

As they slide inside, there’s a wrapped parcel under one arm that both dogs look very interested in all of a sudden, and Rookie holds up above their head when Old Dogmeat snarts sniffing for it. “Ey, no! This isn’t all for you, fuckers, back off—”

Sarah snorts as she watches Rookie make for the kitchen, both Dogmeats hot on their heels. “I mean, don’t they say a year for humans is seven in dog years, or something? That means five minutes for them is, like…” Sarah does the maths, and she’s not ashamed to admit it takes quite a bit of finger-counting to get there. “Thirty-five minutes. You left them to starve for  _ half a dog hour, _ Rookie. For shame.”

Rookie reaches the kitchen, slapping down the meat onto the wide countertop that Sarah had constructed out of scrap metal and a prayer, and Sarah laughs at the blank stare they look at her with. “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re on  _ their _ side now? I heard what you said through the door, asshole, not to mention that look on your face.”

Sarah shrugs with an easy acceptance, but anything else Rookie had to say is quickly derailed when Dogmeat jumps up to rest her impressive paws on the counter, her angled head now level with Rookie’s eyes, and they yelp, quick to tuck an elbow about her neck to bring her back down to the floor. “No! Counter is for  _ humans, _ not  _ dogs—” _

Meanwhile, on their other side, Old Dogmeat pulls the same trick, nearly pushing Rookie right over to sniff at bloodsoaked newspapers, and Rookie’s face is shot through with betrayal.

“No! Down! I fed you guys this  _ morning, _ why are you being so dramatic?!”

Sarah just folds her arms, content to watch the carnage as both Dogmeats hop up one after another— not even going after the meat, it seems, with their tails wagging in a way that suggests its playtime — and when Rookie finally looks back to Sarah, it’s with a long and childish whine.

_ “Saraaaaaah,” _ they whinge, one hand firmly around Dogmeat’s worn leather collar as they try (and fail) to haul her away. “Control your stupid dog!”

“You first,” she offers in return, but she relents after that, letting off a short whistle that sees Dogmeat settle in an instant, padding her way to Sarah’s side to receive a pat between her pointed ears. Rookie scowls, but a harsh command between their teeth also makes Old Dogmeat finally sit at their feet, smiling up at them with his pink tongue lolling out of his mouth, unapologetic as ever.

“God,” Rookie starts, reaching over to a small basin habitually filled with clean water and left on the side to wash their hands and dishes in, and they dip their hands in to find a mottled bar of soap at the bottom. “That dog suits you so well, you know that? I look at her face and I swear she  _ looks _ like you sometimes.”

Sarah raises an eyebrow, and very specifically doesn’t look to Dogmeat, just in case she sees Rookie’s point get proven before her very eyes. “How so?”

“Well, you know! Weren’t German Shepards, like, Pre-War police dogs? Military dogs?” Rookie cants their head in Dogmeat’s direction, who cants hers right back. “Look at her! Tough as Brahmin hide, obeys all your commands,  _ and _ she obeys even when it’s just a  _ whistle _ or whatever… is she reading your mind?”

Sarah shrugs again, though even she’s been surprised by Dogmeat’s sheer tenacity out on the field. Picking her up at Red Rocket had been a spur of the moment idea, if only because Sarah’s compulsive need to do the Right Thing had convinced her to try and find the mutt an owner on the way to Diamond City, but then Dogmeat had defended Sarah from a plethora of attacks and had warned her of many more, always returning to Sarah’s side when called and finding her plenty of supplies with the aid of a keen nose. By the time they’d reached the Wall, Sarah found that she just couldn’t bring herself to let the damn dog go, and despite going through hell and high water… well, Dogmeat’s a survivor. Sarah can relate.

“I dunno,” Sarah finally says after a long minute, reaching down to scratch at Dogmeat’s ears again. “Maybe I’m just a dog person.”

Rookie watches her carefully, screwing up their face like they’re trying to puzzle something out for a few seconds, and then they relax all at once with an airy laugh.

“They say that owners and dogs are super similar, don’t they?” they begin, and Sarah’s not sure where this is going until Rookie winks over their shoulder. “Makes sense they’re just as hard to kill and as much of a pain in the ass as you are, right?”

Sarah glares back, and all it takes is for her to give a single disapproving click of her tongue before Dogmeat goes barrelling across the room, leaping up onto Rookie to cover their face in licks and nips. Rookie splutters — getting a mouthful of dog tongue in the process — and stumbles backwards, nearly crashing right into Sarah’s table of gun parts as they wrestle with her dog. “Sarah! Sarah— ugh,  _ gross, _ Sarah! Call her off!”

Instead of doing that, Sarah crouches down to pat Old Dogmeat’s flank when he turns to nose at her socks, and she watches with a smile as Rookie nearly gets dragged to the floor underneath seventy pounds of muscled hound. “What do you say, buddy?” she asks, and Old Dogmeat’s shining, heterochromatic eyes watch her with wonder. “Shall I call her off in five minutes, or ten?”

The answer is actually about thirty seconds, but that’s mostly because Dogmeat ends up sitting across Rookie’s chest, pinning them to the floor as they squirm about, trapped under her weight. Rookie calls for Old Dogmeat’s help  _ (sicc em, boy!) _ but when he wanders over just to lie down on their legs, Sarah’s nigh helpless with laughter.

“Traitors!” Rookie wheezes, but Sarah can’t really tell what they’re saying when Dogmeat rolls over, and all their words are muffled into a double-coat of dog hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Catch me around on sentinel-lyons for more content Like This, and toss me a comment or some kudos if you enjoyed!


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